One With The Universe? – Dialectic Two Step

Estimated reading time: 16 minute(s)

Woah, Woah, Woah, there. Hold on a second. Let’s back away from the hyperbole and take a nice deep breath now.  What do you mean “we’re all one with the universe”?  No really, do you know what you mean? In a lot of ways it’s a pretty counter intuitive idea. How sturdy is this Buddhist aphorism? I think it deserves a little poking?

Probably, most of us have an abstract sense of oneness.  We’re all part of a whole.  We’re all in this boat together and so on.  But if we drill down, how far does this interconnectedness hold up?

If we drill down, how far does interconnectedness hold up?
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Let’s start with the arguments against oneness.  It’s pretty easy to come up with examples of how we’re not connected.

First of all, within our own species we live lives quite apart from each other. Our minds and bodies are substantially disconnected. We don’t directly feel the pain or hear the thoughts of others. If I eat a piece of food, your stomach isn’t filled. If you drink a glass of water, my thirst is not quenched.  When one of us dies, the other lives on.

Even on an abstract level, we’re rarely in synch.  Our perspectives, developed from our unique experience, always differ.   We hold ideas on a spectrum rather than uniformly. We have nuanced beliefs that differ from person to person.  Each of us views the world from a singular vantage point and we have strong preferences centered on our own survival, reproductive imperatives, and prosperity.

Take another step beyond the circle of humanity, we share even less of a connection with the animals and plants that cohabitate our ecosystem.  Generally we have little regard for them and certainly have much less in common.

Stepping further, we have a presumptive relationship with our planet. We absorb its resources with impunity and any concern we have is related to our dependence on it.  Expanding beyond the boundaries of our planet is really beyond our day to day capacity.  Our circle of interest is typically confined to our personal space.

So honestly, does it make any sense to say that we’re all one with the universe?  Is there a context in which it makes sense?  Or is it just another nonsensical religious idea ready for the garbage heap?

Is oneness just another nonsensical religious idea ready for the garbage heap?
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An Experiment

Here’s a thought experiment that might help.  Let’s imagine a universe without humans.  In fact given the duration and impact of our residency here, imagination doesn’t have to carry us very far. We are less consequential than the speck on the mole on the frog on the bump on the log in the hole at the bottom of the sea.

So, would the universe miss us?  For millions of years life on earth has ebbed and flowed, flourished and declined.  It has been gently oscillating near equilibrium for millions of years. All the while evolution shaping life as part of this balance.

While we often naively perceive this balance as harmony, it is a rather cold and harsh phenomenon.  Mass extinctions and the wonder of intelligent life go unnoticed to the vacant stare of the universe.  And individual lives have little value in nature’s equations.

This is a sobering, and perhaps depressing view of nature, but it is a perspective to consider as an intelligent life form capable of great good and great evil in this world.  This is where the thought experiment bears fruit.  Our intelligence creates unique opportunities and burdens.

Our large brains with their highly developed frontal cortexes, provide us with significant storage and computing power.  Combine that with a consciousness into which ideas can be formulated and actions executed, we are formidable creatures.

The opportunities are boundless.  We are harnessing the very fabric of the universe to do our bidding.  We are contemplating the vastness of the universe, its growth from seemingly nothing to infinite space. But as I mentioned, there are burdens that come with our abilities.

With consciousness comes imagination.  Imagination allows us to create entire worlds in memory.  From it, humans have created astonishing art, literature, music, and scientific theories.  But we have also used it to imagine greed, hatred, and delusions. We’ve formulated deeply repressive ideologies that have led to genocide and the destruction of our environment.

In short, consciousness and imagination can serve as a barrier between us and the rest of the world.  As we replace each object in the world with a name, an idea, we become further removed from direct experience.  We are susceptible to the machinations of these inventories and narratives in our minds. We mistake someone’s tired facial expression with a malicious look or conflate a mole hill with a mountain.

Union

Many Buddhists around the world practice the recitation of mantra.  Let’s take the mantra of compassion ‘Om, mani padme hum.”  The final syllable – hum – can be translated as union.  In Pure Land Buddhism, the chanting of the name Amitabha symbolizes our utter and complete reliance on “other power”.  Only through union with Amitabha can we be saved.

To put this in context, union (or oneness) means a rediscovery of direct experience.  It is a balance between the benefits and burdens of our consciousness.  There are clear benefits to thinking through how we respond to life, but we must be grounded in and available to discern what our senses are telling us.

The Buddhist appeal to oneness is an antidote to the uniquely human problem of living in our heads
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The Buddhist appeal to oneness is an antidote to the uniquely human problem of living in our heads.  While many of us swoon at the implications of quantum entanglement and other theories that seem to imply deeper connections, we should be careful about misapplying the concept of oneness.

It is a very practical reminder that we must be mindful of our relationship with our surroundings, including our partners, families, friends, acquaintances, and the environment.

Dialectic Two-Step  is an ongoing series of my thoughts on questions that come my way.

Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. - Octavio

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The post One With The Universe? – Dialectic Two Step written by Andrew Furst appeared on Andrew Furst.